


In Fewer Words

by Wilder



Category: Hunger Games Trilogy - Suzanne Collins
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-10-25
Updated: 2015-10-25
Packaged: 2018-04-28 02:20:04
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,596
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5073622
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Wilder/pseuds/Wilder
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Johanna Mason is fire in a completely different sense from Katniss Everdeen. She's rougher, less stable, and sometimes the spark in her eye is less determination than madness. Gale isn't expecting her to turn up in District Two. He isn't expecting her to be the perfect counter to the way he's falling apart.</p>
<p>He sure as hell isn't expecting to have to convince himself that he doesn't love her.</p>
            </blockquote>





	In Fewer Words

When Thirteen’s team infiltrates the Capitol in search of Peeta Mellark, it’s Gale who finds Johanna.

He hasn’t been looking for her specifically – she is a secondary objective, her rescue barely more than coincidence that she happens to be confined in the same area as Peeta. Sure, the mission was framed around getting all of them out, but everyone knows that if they have to cut and run, it’s Peeta and Annie they need.

The moment he sees her, though, Gale knows he isn’t going to take the chance of her spending another hour in this pit. Not out of any attachment to her, he doesn’t know her. But he wouldn’t leave anyone who looked like she does.

She is all bruised skin and prominent bones, covered in electrical burns, her head shaved and her eyes wandering feverishly behind half-shut lids. Gale barely recognizes her. They have kept her alive, but only just.

When Gale calls that he’s found her, Johanna’s eyes snap open, frantic desperation showing through a haze of pain and weakness and the knockout gas that hasn’t fully permeated into her cell. Gale stays with her until the team has secured their primary targets. He doesn’t know if she knows who he is, but it doesn’t matter. He won’t leave her alone.

Extraction is simpler than they expected, but that doesn’t mean they don’t have to contend with security. Gale ends up carrying Johanna out. Even in the worst days of Twelve, it was unusual to find someone so close to starvation. He takes shrapnel in his shoulder for the trouble, but it’s worth it. The team has Peeta. Maybe they’ll be able to get their Mockingjay back on task.

Medical takes Johanna Mason out of his arms, but Gale can’t escape the feeling of her ribs digging into him until his head starts swimming from pain and loss of blood. He almost hits the floor before someone sees how badly he’s hurt and catches him as he collapses.

 

Gale doesn’t think about Johanna Mason again for a long time. Katniss is his priority, and she’s a mess. Every so often, he hears a snippet of information about the woman he carried out of the Capitol, but she’s just another element of Thirteen. Even when he encounters her in the hospital room she shares with Katniss, the day she calls him gorgeous in a mocking tone as she bumps his thigh with a hip still too sharply defined, he barely takes notice.

When the war is over, though, Gale runs as far away from Katniss as he can imagine. She doesn’t want him there. He doesn’t deserve to be there. He didn’t kill Prim, but his design did. So he goes to District Two, and becomes instrumental in keeping it under control. Gale loses himself in the work, becoming ever more the consummate soldier. Katniss would probably say that Gale is losing who he used to be. Gale thinks that’s just fine.

He’s not expecting Johanna to show up in Two. After her meltdown in testing, he thought she’d stay out of the field. But he supposes this isn’t “the field” anymore. And maybe she’s made progress.

Johanna’s emaciated, abused body has recovered as much as it will. Burn scars will cross her skin forever, but she has brought herself back to lean muscle and quick reflexes.

“Do you really want me to call you _Commander Hawthorne_ now?” she addresses him casually, a grin lighting her sharp features. “I’m not going to blow smoke up your ass, kid. You can have all the fancy titles you want, but I’m not using them.”

Gale almost laughs. He’s never gotten used to the formality. He would have been perfectly happy remaining a rank-and-file soldier, but he’s too valuable for that. Gale’s sharp, pragmatic outlook is important in a time like this. He appreciates having the level of input he does, but there are days that make him long for the woods.

“Call me Commander and I swear I’ll have you escorted back to Seven,” he says with a cocked eyebrow.

Johanna snorts. She has tried going home. She thinks if she has to take one step in the Victor’s Village again, she’ll set it ablaze.

She has vague memories of the night Thirteen’s forces broke her out of the Capitol. Knockout gas will do that to a person. But she remembers Gale Hawthorne’s voice, and the way he didn’t pull away from her desperate grip on his arms. Gale has seen Johanna at her weakest, but there’s not a scrap of pity in his voice or his face when he speaks to her.

Johanna likes that about him.

 

She tries to fall into the new routine of District Two’s military presence, but Johanna is ill-equipped. She is too defiant, too willing to disregard orders when she thinks she has a better idea than her superiors. Gale sighs when he receives a notice saying he has to convince her to do her damned job, or she’s going to be removed from active duty.

He approaches the house she’s holed up in, intending to take a hard line, but he realizes before he can say a word that it will be pointless. Instead, when she lets him in with a sarcastic, “What a fucking _treat_ ,” Gale just leans against the wall and looks her in the eye.

“Why are you here, Johanna?” he asks. “The war’s over. I thought you’d be as far from the military as you could manage.”

Johanna was expecting a lecture. She was expecting to be scolded for her insubordinate behavior and disregard for authority. But Commander Gale Hawthorne is asking her why she’s _here_ , and she doesn’t have an answer prepared for that.

“You’re skipping straight to the tough questions, aren’t you?” she mutters. Gale looks calmly back at her, his shoulders lifting momentarily in a subtle shrug. “I’m here because I don’t have anywhere else to go. Thought I might as well be useful, since the only thing I’m good at is fighting.”

Gale pauses before responding. It’s not a surprise. Johanna hasn’t had a home in a long time.

“It’s not all about fighting anymore.”

“I know that!” Johanna snaps. “But you don’t know, you have no _fucking_ idea what it’s like trying to play a real soldier after you’ve been in the Games.”

“You’re right. I don’t. But what I really don’t get is why you want to try,” Gale says.

“You’re running from our little Mockingjay. I’m running from myself.”

That hurts. Gale hasn’t talked about Katniss in months. He has always wanted to protect people, and he has convinced himself that that’s why he’s here. But Johanna Mason has his number, and he’s not going to bother lying to her.

“Johanna, what do you want me to do?” Gale asks, exasperated. “I can’t keep looking past you. It’s not safe to have you on active duty the way you’ve been.”

A mutinous glare is all the response he gets for a few moments, and Gale is just about ready to leave and tell his team that Johanna is hopeless when she speaks.

“Hey,” she says quietly. “Why’d you stay with me? When you came to get Peeta out.”

Gale looks at her again, and there’s a surprising vulnerability in her eyes.

“I wouldn’t have left anyone like that,” he tells her. “I wasn’t sure if you were going to keep breathing.”

The answer seems to satisfy her, and she nods.

“So do you want me to try playing nice with the soldiers, or do you have something better for me to do?” she asks, the edge coming back into her voice.

 

It turns out that Johanna makes a better informant than a soldier. Some things she just knows, courtesy of years surrounded by the mire of the Capitol. Others she can figure out, offering a different viewpoint from just about anyone else who has stayed in Two.

She’s also the only person who dares to tease Gale, which he doesn’t admit he finds refreshing. He gets a little tired of the dead serious tone of every single interaction he has with humanity lately.

“Shit, Gale, do you ever quit frowning?” she asks him one night as they leave another meeting.

Gale rolls his eyes as her elbow digs into his ribs, but he doesn’t answer. It hasn’t been a great day. Johanna senses that her prodding is not appreciated, and for a moment, she shuts up.

“Come on,” she says abruptly, taking his wrist.

“What?”

“ _Follow_ me, Commander Dumbass, before I come to my senses.”

Gale considers stopping her, asking what the hell is going on. He follows Johanna outside instead, even once she releases his wrist. Once or twice, he wonders where they’re going, until he recognizes the street where she’s lived since she showed up in District Two.

“Johanna –”

“Gale, I really need you to shut the fuck up for five more minutes,” Johanna says, shaking her head.

He’s almost curious enough to let that slide and keep in step with her, but not quite.

“Stop, Johanna. What –?”

She kisses him before he can get another word out, and by the time she pulls away – mischief glinting in her eyes – Gale has forgotten the rest of his sentence. But when he tries to touch her, she steps lightly back out of his reach and continues on her way into the building she’s claimed as her own.

Gale doesn’t move for a moment, but almost before he knows it, her door is swinging shut behind him.


End file.
